Stories Seldom Told

Remona Aly is a journalist and broadcaster in the UK with a passion for faith, lifestyle and identity. She writes for The Guardian, is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought and has been a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Something Understood, a half hour programme which explores a theme across different faiths and traditions through music, prose and poetry. She is also a podcast host for various platforms.

Remona is Director of Communications for Exploring Islam Foundation which specialises in PR campaigns and creative resources to better understand Islam.

Remona is the former Deputy Editor of Emel, a vibrant and glossy British Muslim lifestyle magazine which was the first of its kind to launch nationwide in the UK.

"I have always loved my faith, and I have wanted to fully embrace who I am. So wearing a headscarf, praying, being Muslim is just, it's literally a core part of who I am, it's everything that I am. And I want to be able to write about anything I want to with passion, authenticity and honesty. I also want to be able to communicate with people, I don't want to create a barrier between me and anybody else. Even though, my physical appearance might create certain barriers, but I work really hard to remove them."

Ayisha Malik is author of the Sofia Khan novels, This Green and Pleasant Land and The Movement. She was winner of the Diversity Book Awards 2020, and teaches creative writing for the academies, Faber and Curtis Brown. Ayisha lives in London.

"I just had a lot of questions about the culture of noise we live in. And I was also a bit fed up of people just constantly having opinions, which to me, that was something jarring about the way people were jumping up on bandwagons. And what you know and offer their opinion on absolutely everything and have a take and it's all black and white. And I just, I felt like with all this noise you just can't you almost can't hear yourself think, which is why the idea of silence came about."

Dr. Oshrit Birvadker is a foreign and defense policy expert, with expertise in the area of India and the Persian Gulf. Oshrit is a regular columnist in Haaretz, a writer of the “Miss India” Column in the leading business news website in Israel, The Marker.

"Sometimes beautiful people are less likely to be heard. One study has suggested that highly attractive people are at a disadvantage in the hiring process when the decision makers are the same sex, for example. But highly attractive people of the same sex were judged as less talented than average looking people.

Jodi Anderson Jr. is the CEO and Co-founder of Rézme, an EdTech platform that facilitates economic and social mobility through specialized recruiting, professional development, and personalized learning for justice-impacted citizens. After serving ten years in juvenile and adult prisons, Jodi earned his BA in Political Science and an MA in Education from Stanford University.

His non-profit PipeDreamers helps to coordinate diversion programming in the Bay Area while bringing coding and design courses to youth incarcerated in juvenile facilities across Northern California. As an alumnus of Cornell University’s Prison Education Program, he continues to be an advocate for criminal justice reform and access to higher education.

"And so our heroes as youth were not doctors and lawyers, or engineers, or politicians. They were quite literally like mobsters, and mafia types. Because those were individuals in our neighbourhood who had any kind of social standing influence and access to capital. They also knew how to make money, and they often provided opportunities, both financially and socially, for everyone in the neighbourhood. And so those are my early heroes. And often how they're portrayed in the media, you know the common conception, as he's kind of like ruthless, cold hearted. Lacking a moral compass kind of characters, who just have it on neighbourhoods and manipulate people and destroy society."

Paul Stevenson is a lived experience ambassador at Genius Within and a public speaker. Genius Within is a social enterprise established in the UK to help neurodivergent people unlock their talents, whilst acknowledging and celebrating that this diversity forms part of the rich tapestry of human experience.

They advise governments on policy and provide consultancy to businesses, driving systemic change that allows all employees to thrive. They provide in-work support in the form of coaching, training and assessments. They also support neurodiverse/neurodivergent thinkers who are not in the workplace, who might be studying, unemployed or in the criminal justice system.

As Paul says of himself “I have Tourette Syndrome- it doesn’t have me! I’m not broken and don’t need fixing.”

See https://geniuswithin.org/what-is-neurodiversity/ for further information on Genius Within.

"And I started to analyse where these tics were coming from, you know, tics in Italian - and I can't speak Italian. So I spoke to one of the guys who I work with, and he said, is it possible that when I was young, everything that I've heard all the words that I've absorbed, actually remain inside my head? I never forget them, but maybe lost the ability to recall them. But everything is there as a memory and Tourette Syndrome, the vocal tics, has an ability to access those in a rapid sort of speed."

“So, when you get embedded in a network, what happens is your freedom to think wider than what the interests of the network represents is compromised. What happens is that your faithfulness to a tradition becomes unfortunately, unfaithfulness to your own personal integrity. Because there are very many questions with which you’re struggling in your life. And no system in the world, no religious institution or structure in the world can accommodate those questions, much less answer them.”

Seema Anand is a  mythologist, a storyteller with a focus on women’s narratives and a specialty in the erotic literature of ancient India.

Seema believes that the narrative of the Kama Sutra was deliberately silenced. It was a brave book that tried to change the position of women in society, and was the first text to give women a platform of equality.

Her seminal work ‘The Arts of Seduction’, is a commentary on the metaphors and lost narratives of the Kama Sutra is an effort to reclaim the book for its intended purpose.

"And hence, I am giving you a compliment  that in spite of your grey hair, you look amazing. That you must have looked so much better when you were younger. And that's another unconscious bias that we automatically assume that youth is prettier. And I have to agree that youth is beautiful anyway, but to think that you looked better then is what I'm getting to."

Octoli Tuccu is a Learning & Development expert with over a decade of experience. Octoli is originally from Nagaland in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, in the northeast of India. She has lived in five countries including the USA, Qatar, Thailand, China and India. Octoli has trained over a thousand professionals globally on various leadership development subjects.

"People would constantly ask me where I'm from, or like what my education background was. And for me, that was them asking me his questions to almost belittle me. Until that day that I met you, and you asked me, what if they just want to know where you're from and what your background is, just out of curiosity? I had never thought of it like that. And it was such a liberating experience for me because I had created this bondage for myself. And I was living in it, believing that I will never be taken seriously because I'm not a man and I'm not of a certain age. So all of these stereotypes that I have of people buried deeply in my mind, they do impact the way that I treat people and the way I think. As unintentional as they are, I definitely don't believe that they're harmless. So this, for me, is unconscious bias."

Jo Uff is a Confidence Coach based in England for women who want to lead a more fulfilling life, but feel that something is holding them back from being, doing, and having more of what they want.

Jo supports them to reignite their interest in life, move forward, and achieve the changes they want to make. She works with them to define their future with intention, overcome the personal blocks holding them back, and take actions towards achieving what they now want in their personal or professional life.

"It was small things, it was kind of telling me that I wasn't good at something, or even teachers telling you that you could have tried harder, or you should have done better at that. And you kind of build up, and I built up, these just small things, bit, by bit, by bit, that led me to a stage of thinking. Well, I'm just no good at anything. And I'm just not confident and everything fills me with fear."

Richard Thomas and his wife Susanna have led Hillside Church in Wimbledon for 27 years, where he is the pastor. Richard also serves as chaplain to The Priory Hospital, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Cancer Centre London. He is passionate about how we respond spiritually in our darkest hours.

"Historically, epilepsy was believed to be caused by demons. So that automatically put anybody who had a seizure, or a fit, as in the evil camp. Now we sort of know that it's caused by an electrical imbalance in the brain. But still, it's a disease that's stigmatised and looked down upon. I remember when I was diagnosed, the doctor could not have done a worse job of telling me. He almost couldn't look me in the eye. He avoided any deep conversation about it and I was in and out of the office in just a few minutes, and then saw him treating an old lady with so much tenderness and care. I wondered what was wrong with me and, of course, it was epilepsy."